Letterhead
by Tsukiko Lily
Summary: No rest for the weary. It's a depressing fic about younger!Russell. For Rune Haven's Monthly contest, the theme being "Letters."


**Author's Note:** Sigh. I _really_ don't like this one! I love the premise, but it really feels like it's missing something, and I think it's rather awkwardly written. Oh, well. I really liked this theme and really wanted to write for it (especially since I tied for first with two other people and helped pick it), and this is all I could come up with for it, and as I said, I like the _idea_ of it, so I'll just go ahead and post it anyway. I feel that this story needs a bit of explanation, so for those who want it… When I read "Letters," I thought of a younger Russell being in the war and not getting letters from home, because my pet theory has always been that he lost his family, for some reason. I also imagined it as taking place while he convalesces in a run-down hospital, and that it would show him going a bit crazy. I've always found him interesting to write because he can be portrayed as having had some trauma in his past, so I thought it might be sort of neat to kind of get to the start of that and contrast how he currently is with how he was (or rather, _could_ have been depending on how you interpret him). I worry about him being OOC in this, but I also think that was kind of the point. He's out of _current_ character, perhaps. I also played a bit fast-and-loose with the setting, since I usually like to stick to writing about the established canon towns, so that might explain why I'm not so crazy about this one. ^^;

**Warnings:** Sad, depressing, unpleasant, etc. Could be seen as a bit disturbing at parts, I suppose, depending on your personal comfort levels for different things. But not violent or graphic. I think it's a solid T? Also, it's not very good, possible OOC, weird setting, random unnamed characters who are glorified extras… I don't know what I was thinking on this one. T_T

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** I think it's obvious that I do not own Rune Factory. For one thing, Rune Factory isn't grim. For another, it isn't stupid. ^^;

**Letterhead**

_Where am I?_

Russell cracked his eyes open. _Wherever I am,_ he thought, _it sure is white. And blurry._ It dawned on him that he hadn't been wearing his glasses. Working with the assumption that they were probably somewhere nearby, he turned over and felt around on what seemed to be a small table until he heard a familiar clattering sound. He figured that he might gain a better understanding of his surroundings if he could at least see them. The lenses were slightly scratched in places, but they were an improvement nonetheless. Though no longer blurry, everything still seemed eerily white, aside from a bright yellow patch projected on the wall, where the evening sun shone in through a dusty, aging window. The white paint on the wall was cracked and peeling in places. He remembered that he was still in the hospital.

The past few days started coming back to him. He was apparently in a hospital in Fort-Something-or-Other, recovering from severe exhaustion and a high fever. Going on snippets of conversation he heard while laid up, he'd supposedly been awake for days on end, which had weakened his body and rolled out the welcome mat for whatever happened to be going around at the time. Russell didn't feel like he'd been awake for that long. He hadn't _felt_ particularly tired, and the few attempts at sleep during that time were met with failure. He had just assumed that he stopped needing it, up until his body decided for itself and he passed out cold on the battlefield. Things went hazy after that. He hadn't really done much in the past few days, besides sleeping, listening to doctors droning on from behind a curtain of delirium, and whimpering at passing hallucinations. All things aside, he was glad for the rest. He didn't know if he could take another day in the trenches.

He felt particularly grateful for getting to recover in a proper, indoor hospital. He'd been injured earlier that year, and had to spend some time in a field hospital, surrounded by the bleeding, the dying, and the dead. He found it to be rather like the battlefield, though more claustrophobic, and the smell was a bit worse. Russell also happened to have had the misfortune of being hospitalized during shortages, so his recovery seemed to drag on forever due to infrequent dressing changes and malnutrition. _Oh, right. Food._ It occurred to him that he hadn't eaten since a day or two before he collapsed. He thought about asking a nurse or doctor for something to eat next time they came around to check on him, then quickly decided against it. He wasn't feeling particularly hungry, and remembering the smell of the cot he had to sleep on back then was making him feel physically ill. _Several people had died on that mattress. No one told me that, but I could always tell because they could never get the smell out of those things. Then there was all the screaming. No anesthesia…_ He sat up and held his head in his hands. Some strange new uneasiness was coming over him.

"Oh, you're awake!"

Russell cast a glance at the bed across the room. It was occupied by a young man around his own age. He remembered overhearing that he did indeed have a roommate, who was in for a broken leg, if he had heard correctly.

"…That I am."

"You woke up for a while last night too. At least I think so, because you were screaming something awful, and…"

Russell cringed.

"Sorry. Must be the fever."

_Actually, that's been happening to me for the past few months, but I don't need to make a public record of it._

"Don't worry about it. I went right back to sleep."

Russell was starting to find his cheerfulness grating, and began idly wondering if he'd ever killed anyone. It didn't seem like it. After having done it a few times himself, he could always tell.

"Well, that's good for you."

"…Mail's in!"

The voice came from behind the door, and belonged to an orderly, who briskly walked in to the room, carrying several envelopes. Russell watched his roommate cheerfully accept them. Nothing had come for him, but he supposed that followed. _No living relatives._

"…Nothing today, huh?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Maybe it hasn't gotten here yet? It can take a while for them to work out which one of us a letter belongs to, and then to find us… All of these are from before anyone knew I was hurt, so…"

"Look… I never get any mail. It's fine."

"Does your family not care about you? Or… Oh. Right. I'm sorry."

Something about the way Russell went suddenly quiet must have tipped him off, causing him to stop speaking as well. Russell wanted to bask in the newfound silence, but it wasn't long before the noise in his head started interfering, determined to never let him rest. _I'll always be the one who never gets letters._ He wanted to cry, but that was an ability he'd lost a good while ago. It occurred to him that he'd barely read a word since he'd been swept up in all this. He wanted to see ink on paper again. But it was the idea he hated most of all: he knew that whoever didn't get letters got pity in their place. That he couldn't stand. It was the way they'd look at him, like some pathetic, fragile creature, something that he certainly wasn't. Damaged, yes. Irreparably broken, quite possibly. But certainly _not_ pitiful, or fragile, or anything else they'd make him out to be as he sat empty-handed after every mail call. He'd handled things well, after all. He could have crumpled right then and there in his ruined hometown. Instead, he developed his marksmanship, got by without sleep, ignored hunger, followed orders, held in his nightmares, stopped caring about dying, learned to kill without flinching. _And now there are people at home on the other side who won't be getting any letters, either._ By his logic, he didn't _deserve_ pity, either. As much as he longed every day to draw ink in to his pen and write a letter that could somehow reach the family he had lost, he knew it was more than impossible, it was a sign of some deep weakness, or even corruption. _Killers don't get to wish that those close to them hadn't been killed._

That was when he noticed the mirror, located a mere yard or two from the foot of his bed. It made him wonder who had the bright idea to stick mirrors in hospital rooms. His reflection was about as depressing as he'd expected. Pale, in need of a haircut, still visibly and obviously ill. He also took note of the fact that there seemed to be nothing behind his eyes. It made him look like one of the ones who didn't wake up screaming anymore, the unsalvageable men who always seemed to be leaders, like staring at a future he hoped he wouldn't live to see. He wanted out of this war. Or at least out of this run-down old hospital.

"Hey, I'm going back to sleep so I can get some rest and get out of this place."

No response from the other side of the room. Russell removed his glasses and lied down with his face to the wall. The cracks in the paint had gone blurry again. _…And I'm out like a light._

_Just remember that none of it was real._ With some of his strength recovered, Russell had once again become prone to sleeping in short, restless bursts. He felt himself gasp upon waking, and quickly clamped his hands over his mouth. _Don't scream._ The sun had gone down in the few hours he had been sleeping, and the room seemed like it had become one indistinct, dark mass. _You were sleeping. It didn't happen._ Telling himself that he was "only dreaming" seemed futile. Russell's worst nightmares were just embellished versions of things that _did_ happen, things that his dreaming mind wouldn't let him forget. But he was having a hard time getting a deep breath, and didn't know anything else he could do that would calm him down. He just wanted to not have to handle things so well, just for a little while. He thought about going home to his mother and father, to the family home, the study with its books and armchairs. _No home to go back to._ Still shivering with hands cupped over his mouth, he started composing a letter in his head, addressed to the family he'd never seen again. He wanted so badly to say just how _scared_ he was. How he'd done horrible things that made him feel sick inside and narrowly escaped a violent death himself more times than he could count. That he was hurting and having nightmares. He knew no one could hear him in his own mind, no one but him, and he didn't like being reminded. Even still, lying paralyzed with terror in the darkness, the only thing he could think to do was to write all the letters he could never send, filling the pages of his mind with things that he could never say out loud.

_Don't scream._


End file.
